Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

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RE: We were just speculating on the use of the new GUSTARD DAC-X20U....

Posted by AbeCollins on December 24, 2016 at 10:22:29:
It only goes to DSD 256 but there are indications that may change early next year.
My PS Audio can do DSD over HDMI I2S but limited to DSD128.
The idea of upsampling to DSD 512 in software and streaming to a DAC capable of dealing with that would be interesting, if one could do it for less than $1500, the price of the GUSTARD DAC and the Singxer box.
Interesting yes, but worthwhile? I guess you'll find out if you go that route.
Add a Windows 10 computer with a high end graphics card and suddenly I am losing interest.
You don't NEED the high-end graphics but HQPlayer can be CPU intensive. In simple terms HQPlayer can shift much of the processing load to nVidia graphics cards because HQPlayer was written using the CUDA API to take advantage of certain nVidia GPU cards if present.
HQPlayer is definitely fun to play with. I found it interesting to observe HQPlayer's CPU utilization doing different sample rate conversions. Some were fairly modest while others really taxed the CPU. That was on my Mac Mini 2.6GHz i7 Quad-Core with 16GB RAM.
Oh, and if you do decide to get a Windows PC at some point, an old one may not be the bargain you think it is. Newer CPU's, even in our tiny Mac Mini's, can out perform huge PC workstations that are only a few years old.
This was a comparison I did a while back of an inmate's eBay 39-Lb. Dell T5500 workstation that he was very excited about. It is slower than my 4 year old 2.6-Lb. Mac Mini in terms of CPU performance.
Seem to recall that older MacBook Pro had a discrete nVidia graphics option?
Some did, but like many older computers they also had slower CPUs, slower memory, slower graphics cards, and overall slower internal architecture. Probably not worth the investment going that route if you want GPU performance. If you want nVidia graphics you will likely want a decent PC after all - must have x16 PCIe slot and aux power to support power hungry high-end GPUs - or get a "gaming laptop" similar to the one Mercman has, but it must have nVidia graphics to support HQPlayer GPU offload. I would not waste money on an old noisy PC that starts out being slower than your present 2.6-Lb. Mac Mini.
As an aside, you may have seen the webpage linked below from Mojo Audio. It's an interesting read on DSD, PCM, and R2R DACs.